Episode Details

This is a survey of various ways that I’d like to see work on the theory of condensation develop. Condensation is a mathematical theory dealing with the organization of descriptions of the world into conceptual parts; some of the existing work on it is presented in the paper (Eisenstat 2025). This sequence will draw from that paper the definitions of random variable models and latent variable models, the notation for indexing subfamilies of variables in such models, and the objectivity theorem, Theorem 6.8. In the condensation paper, Section 3, Ideas, gives an overview of all of this. For more context on condensation, readers can refer to LessWrong posts including (Demski 2025, 2026; Gillen and Chiang 2026; Kirchner 2026). The first two posts of this sequence will introduce some central directions of current work—mainly, the concepts of almost perfect condensation and Kolmogorov (or algorithmic-information) condensation—which will be used in other sections, but the different parts are mostly independent beyond that.

I’d encourage those making a serious effort on any of these problem to contact me for further thoughts and coordination.

Thanks to Kaarel Hänni and James Cook for some of the ideas behind this research program, and to James Cook [...]

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Outline:

(01:35) 1. Varieties of objectivity

(02:40) 1.1. Almost perfect condensation

(06:44) 1.2. Beyond almost perfect condensation

(10:45) 1.2.1. Almost perfect condensation with a relation

(14:11) 1.2.2. Medium-scale effects

(19:00) 1.3. Almost perfect condensation and scoring functions

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First published:
July 28th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/89GJeixwhFHLWxNbX/research-directions-in-condensation-varieties-of-objectivity

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.